Where Our Recipes Come From

I just got a new cookbook in the mail that inspired me to share our most familiar sources with faithful followers. Most of our recipes come from the Budget Bytes blog, but we also take a lot from our Simply in Season cookbook, as well as a few other sources. I've included some that we only use occasionally or maybe have only shared on this blog once. I've also included sources that maybe we haven't used yet, but want too or want to use more. I'm a very visual person so that's why I wanted to share pictures of our favorite sources as well as a few details about each!


#1-Budget Bytes by Beth M

Let's be real. This blog is probably our absolute favorite place to turn for recipes. Ever since Will discovered it, we have slowly ended up stocking our kitchen with the common ingredients Beth uses for her recipes, keeping costs down even more. As I've mentioned before, we're super stoked that she's been asked to publish a cookbook and we cannot wait to get it! Here is the link in case you've never clicked on it from this blog before: Budget Bytes

#2-Simply in Season by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert 

I absolutely love this book! We have used so many of the recipes throughout the summer and I look forward to this cookbook becoming a staple of our cooking throughout our lives. The food is always fresh and the recipes typically are not overly complicated. It includes everything from breads to main courses to desserts, probably all of which fall into the "healthy" or "organic" categories based on the ingredients you use. I cannot praise this cookbook enough and am so glad we randomly decided to pick it up one day!

#3-Pinterest 

Like every other woman who is on Pinterest, I love the food porn that is on there. It has all the tasty things! Quite often, we find ourselves skimming my "Things to Make" page to come up with recipes to try for dinner, often introducing us to new blogs that we may return too. We especially have found lots of lunch salads that we get from Pinterest that we really enjoy. I personally love seeing the food trends come and go. Remember that time about six months ago when nobody knew what quinoa was and then it was all over Pinterest? We have now incorporated it as our top choice grain, even over our standard favorite (though technically a pasta), couscous. I'm starting to notice white beans as another new trend that we have been quick to jump on as well. So obviously, always a top choice to look at for new recipes. And don't be fooled-men love the site just as much as women. While Will does not have his own Pinterest page, he enjoys helping me post new recipes.

#4-The Kitchn by Apartment Therapy

Apartment Therapy is a website Will came across while looking at stuff on his favorite website, Tiny House Blog. Oddly enough, I had a few things pinned from Apartment Therapy on my boards as well and we realized we both liked the website a lot. Will spends more time on it than me and is the one who discovered The Kitchn-the cooking section of Apartment Therapy. We have tried a couple recipes from there that were successful, so we check back fairly regularly looking for more. For example: I was just on there to get a picture of their logo and same some to-die-for looking slow cooked carnitas that had us both drooling. I would imagine we will be making something similar soon. I think what's most fun about the site is that while it has the specialized section for cooking, it produces so many more ideas that we like and has lots of DIY projects as well. Here is the link: The Kitchn

#5-Food 52 

This is another one of the websites that Will came across while perusing the internet for food blogs. We haven't spent enough   time looking through everything they have to offer (surprise to me-they have  a book or two apparently?).  One of our favorite recipes, Mujaddara with Spiced Yogurt came from Food 52 and I would imagine there are many more recipes out there that are equally as wonderful. When we eventually end up trying everything on Budget Bytes, we will probably evolve into using The Kitchn and Food  52 much more. Here is the link: Food 52

#6-Low Fat Low Cholesterol edited by Anne Sheasby

I checked this book out from the library a couple years ago and was intrigued by the large variety of seemingly worldly recipes that use obscure ingredients. Will and I have tried several recipes from this book that we have enjoyed, but find we don't turn to it much for the exact reason I bought it: obscure ingredients. While they sound awesome, when you need 2 tbsps of malt vinegar or 1 1/2 cups shredded cabbage for only one dish and can't really find anything else to use it in, odd ingredients lose some of their enchantment. However, I hope that when we are "real people" a little more than we currently are in our "sometimes student-sometimes adult" stage, we will turn to this book a little more for the variety it has in store.


#7-Our Own Recipe Binder
This binder mainly consists of recipes that our moms passed on to us or things that we used to enjoy at home that we requested. It contains all of our seasonal cooking recipes, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as comfort foods like potato salad and the best red beans and rice recipe known to mankind. It also is a combination of recipes from all different kinds of cookbooks as well. I went crazy one summer and adopted a technique from my mom, which is to check out library books and make copies of recipes you want to try. We sometimes forget we have this on hand and really try to remember to reference it for more than just "staple" recipes for holidays or baking purposes (it's my largest resource) because it has a HUGE variety of recipes that we found appetizing at one point or another.

#8-The Sriracha Cookbook by Randy Clemens

Admittedly a novelty cookbook. I bought this for my best friend and her boyfriend when they got their first place together as a fun housewarming gift. And then as I became a bigger and bigger fan of sriracha, I decided we needed a copy too. We have only tried a couple of recipes out of here, but so far have been impressed, not only with the quality of the food, but also with the amount of sriracha some of the recipes call for!

#9-Crockpot 5 Ingredients or Less by Crockpot

This is a cookbook my mom got me when I first started sucking up the fact that I would have to cook. Will and I had just gotten a crockpot and he was in love with it, so that's why I think my mother tried to encourage me to use it too. Plus using five ingredients isn't so hard, is it? I've only referenced it a couple of times, but as this semester shapes up to be pretty busy, I'm starting to think we will need a few more cook-in-the-crockpot-all-day recipes than what we have had the luxury of making over the summer. And the other reason I maybe don't turn to it too often? I'm actually confident enough to make multiple things with lots of ingredients on the stovetop, unlike before.

#10-Real Simple Solutions-Quick & Easy Meals/Real Simple Magazine
I finally grew up and subscribed to a big girl magazine. Even though Real Simple  is somewhat directed more for families, you can only pass the pictures of the foods on front so many times at the grocery store before finally giving in and picking up a copy. Luckily when I did, I got to chose a cute little pamphlet to come with my first issue and I chose the "Quick & Easy Meals" pamphlet. While some of the recipes in there call for more expensive foods (like a halibut recipe we wanted to try once until we saw the price of halibut and settled for cod), but we have also uncovered some simpler recipes. Our skillet potatoes recipe is from this little pamphlet and for that recipe alone, subscribing when I did was worth it. The magazine  has plenty of delicious looking recipes that we tear out too, although they usually get shoved in our recipe binder, never to be seen again! Whoops!

#11-1 Stock, 100 Soups by Linda Doeser

Will got this book as an impulse buy at World Market one time. While I personally have never been a big fan of soups, Will was fascinated with them when this book came into our lives. Last winter, we enjoyed several good soups from here and we're actually about to make one out of here again this week (stay tuned). A lot of times Will will make up soup recipes based on what kind of random foods we have in our fridge, left over from meals past. However, when he remembers to look in here, he often finds that a lot of what he has on hand is already combined in a recipe in this book, and that he only needs one or two more ingredients to give his recipe some pizazz.

#12-The Ethnomusicologists' Cookbook by Sean Williams

This is a new recipe book that came in the mail this week. I discovered this when reading a book by Sean Williams last year for an ethnomusicology class and was researching her areas of interest. On her page, I found this cookbook and thought it was a neat idea. After having it on my Amazon wishlist for over six months, I finally broke down and bought it because there were finally some half decent used prices on Amazon and one of the sellers lived in Florida.  The concept of the cookbook is pretty cool-Williams has asked ethnomusicologists to share their recipes from their research all over the world and each contains a write-up about the specific place the food is from. The book is split up into different world regions and some recipes include specific music suggestions. Will and I have perused the Middle Eastern section finding many familiar recipes, but had other foods we prioritized for our recipes this week. I have no doubt that we will be referencing this book in the future, especially for its Middle Eastern cuisine (or perhaps something a little more out of our comfort zone).

#13-The Food of Morocco, A Journey for Food Lovers by Whitecap
Will's mom got him this book after he studied abroad in Morocco to help him be able to create recipes at home that he had experienced while abroad. Many of the recipes are fairly involved, but Will has called upon the tagine recipes before, especially for Middle Eastern ensemble parties in the past. Our most frequently used recipe would have to be the mint tea recipe in this book, the most authentic to what Will had while in Morocco. In our big future kitchen with our endless amounts of time to cook for parties of people who want Moroccan food, we will use it more often. In the meantime though, we will have to settle for occasionally calling upon this book.

#14-Tagine by Ghillie Basan

My mom got this book for Will after he studied abroad in Morocco  (see a trend here? Where's my Irish cookbook mom?) and especially after his mom got him his tagine. He has called upon this book as well to find techniques for cooking in the tagine. This book offers a  nice supplement to our other Moroccan cookbook and both will be fun to cook from throughout our lifetime.